Countries

Summaries of relevant biodiversity information organised by country or territory.

Any country or territory can be party to different mixes of biodiversity-related conventions and treaties, and contain a variety of protected areas and biodiversity designations. The Countries guide aims to collate this information in one place for ease of access, and to provide a different way of navigating the A-Z. Each category is linked to an online source for more information where relevant.

The information presented does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country or territory.

Biodiversity designations represent the sites or regions that have been identified as important for biodiversity conservation due to their biological uniqueness or the high threat that they face. A plethora of different approaches have been promoted by conservation organisations and researchers in order to guide decisions about where to invest in biodiversity conservation. These approaches use globally consistent criteria and available data in order to identify and classify sites. The designations themselves do not confer protected area status, but many of the sites identified may partly or fully overlap with a protected area designation on-ground.